I don't quite get the point you're trying to make. Similarly 'annoying kids' will have the same room to 'grow' here too. Nobody is getting banned.

As for 'yawn', it's so dangerous to have negative feedback. People will feel attacked, and as you cannot defend yourself, frustration will build. Others will 'yawn' posts in revenge. It easily creates tension, or even a hostile atmosphere.

Back in the day, when ChrisM roamed the forum, he enabled good & bad karma in SMF. It allowed people to either vote +1 or -1 on a member. It was a mess. People got really upset - partly because karma votes were anonymous, so you could easily screw somebody without any retribution or social control.

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

I don't quite get the point you're trying to make. Similarly 'annoying kids' will have the same room to 'grow' here too. Nobody is getting banned.

As for 'yawn', it's so dangerous to have negative feedback. People will feel attacked. Others will 'yawn' posts in revenge. It easily creates tension, or even a hostile atmosphere.

Sorry, of course nobody's getting banned - I meant to say I would have banned him

I'm not sure that negative feedback is such a bad thing though. On the animation forum the other posters did the job by posting "shut up" posts in reply which often lead to troll wars. My point is that a yawn button doesn't create a new post, so nobody cares. I'm sure most people will only 'yawn' pointless posts - if two kiddies want to yawn each other to death that's fine! Give a medal to the winner!

What about people starting too many threads? I don't want to start fights by telling people they're spamming, but I really think that has gotten bad, too. It's a shame when the signal to noise ratio gets that low on the unread topics page.

Some of the worst kinds of threads, in no particular order:1) People that don't read the docs for the library they're using2) Extreme cases of didn't-use-a-search-engine-before-posting3) How-to questions that are poorly written, aren't Java related, or are very basic.4) WIP spamming

IMHO, it's best to be gentle and do (in order of increasing annoyance)

nothing

secretly hide it (JGO currently has a bunch of posts that only the author can see )

upon repeated offense, move the post to a 'name and shame' thread, which is locked

delete the post

ban the user for a few weeks, informing them when they are welcome back

Another option is just have a 4chan style sub forum for posting (or moving) senseless posts. Threads automatically get deleted after after a certain amount of time (maybe 24 hours after the last post/reply in a thread). This would allow some senseless discussion (without fear of censorship) while at the same time not messing up the stats or forum.

IMHO, it's best to be gentle and do (in order of increasing annoyance)

nothing

secretly hide it (JGO currently has a bunch of posts that only the author can see )

upon repeated offense, move the post to a 'name and shame' thread, which is locked

delete the post

ban the user for a few weeks, informing them when they are welcome back

Another option is just have a 4chan style sub forum for posting (or moving) senseless posts. They automatically get deleted after after a certain amount of time (maybe 24 hours after the last post/reply in a thread). This would allow senseless discussion while at the same time not messing up the stats or forum.

I think that is a good idea. People will refrain from posting stupid stuff when they realize their posts are being moved to the "Shamefully Senseless" section.

And I could also feel powerful by using my moderators powers for something

IMHO, it's best to be gentle and do (in order of increasing annoyance)

nothing

secretly hide it (JGO currently has a bunch of posts that only the author can see )

upon repeated offense, move the post to a 'name and shame' thread, which is locked

delete the post

ban the user for a few weeks, informing them when they are welcome back

In normal forums, isn't that the main job of mods to do exactly that ?Moving threads, merging threads, complaining, moderating posts... you know...

Again, I don't get the point you are trying to make.

The rate at which the 'annoyance-scale' maps to one of the actions, is the difference between 'gentle' and 'harsh' moderation.

Well, my point is harsh moderation is common, and it works... all this medal/rank/karma/whatever code seems unnecessary if you'd just have mods doing what mods are supposed to do.Maybe I'm secretly complaining that m77 was never banned and instead there more ranks and medals and whatnot. I just like the traditional approach in forums: date of joining, number of posts, name, avatar, thats it - the rest is mod-work

MarkusP and ChrisM would not have a "high" rank using this system. Thats why I think "since when has this person be here" is more important than being a "JGO Knight"

Semi-rhetorical question: what technological fix would you propose for those problems?

I am either oblivious of whatever point you were trying to make or you really meant hypothetical question. <joke>Well, there was a guy that once used YouTube comments to train a spam filter to act as a "stupid filter." Maybe Riven could do the same with StackOverflow questions?</joke>

I don't really think technological fixes alone are ideal. There should be a rule and it should be enforced by human moderators. Forums often have permission settings you can change per group/per person. Posting in existing topics and posting new topics are usually separate permissions, so there is a mechanism to enforce it.

Something that could go a long way is to look at the ratio of a person's new-post-count to new-topic-count. Then you can take some action, like sending them a warning, blocking them from creating a new topic, or putting them on a moderation queue like you would do for new members in a board with lots of serious spammers. It could be made fairly unobtrusive. Here is Java-like pseudocode:

Another option is just have a 4chan style sub forum for posting (or moving) senseless posts. Threads automatically get deleted after after a certain amount of time (maybe 24 hours after the last post/reply in a thread). This would allow some senseless discussion (without fear of censorship) while at the same time not messing up the stats or forum.

You didn't lose medals.Previously there was SMF karma (labeled 'medals') and actual medals (person A appreciates post B of person C). These two values grew out of sync - I had >400 karma but only >300 medals. Now SMF karma is synced with actual medals, making it much less confusing at the cost of a few lost karma points.

Hi, appreciate more people! Σ ♥ = ¾Learn how to award medals... and work your way up the social rankings!

I'm an achievement whore and a perfectionist, which is the reason I don't play most games with achievements. Some of them is just silly grinding and my ocd forces me to grind, if there's achievements for it. xD

Though I've never had any urges about ranks on forums. But it is always nice to be recognized for the time and effort you put into helping others. (Even though, in this forum I think I've gotten more help than given xD)

Absolutely. I've already made sure that all of my Java4k games are detected, and now I'm wondering what the etiquette is on posting links to games I designed and wrote but don't own. The Showcase FAQ says "anything goes", but the Featured Games FAQ seems to imply that you have to own all the rights.

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